Balkan Beat Box

Saturday, September 13

This whole gypsy-rock trend of the past few years still has legs, much to the surprise of anyone who thought it would disappear as quickly as the '90s neo-swing movement. Maybe it's because some of the leaders of the scene  Gogol Bordello, DeVotchKa, Beirut, etc.  aren't strict formalists; rather, they've been taking that vintage Eastern European melody and instrumentation and cross-pollinating it with punk, mariachi, Brit-pop, soul, and other genres. Balkan Beat Box might be the most adventurous of the bunch. Led by Firewater's Tamir Muskat and ex-Bordello man Ori Kaplan  and featuring anywhere from a handful to about 267 members whenever they hit the stage  BBB fuses klezmer/gypsy music to electronic and hip-hop beats and dub/reggae textures for a mighty intoxicating, danceworthy sound.